eBay Business All-in-One For Dummies, 3rd Edition

Chapter 4: Knowing eBay Sales

In This Chapter

• Checking out a listing page
• Bidding on an auction or buying something right now
• Visiting eBay's specialty sites

Sometimes, when you know exactly what you want to buy, you find not one but many auctions and fixed-price listings with that same item for sale. In this situation, knowing the different eBay sales formats is important. In this chapter, I go over the various types of sales and show you the ways to use each type to your advantage.

Checking Out the Listing Page

All item pages on eBay — whether auctions, fixed-price items, or Buy It Now items — look about the same. Figure 4-1 shows a conventional auction-item page. If you were viewing this auction page on the screen, you could scroll down and see a complete description of the item, along with shipping information.

Figure 4-1: A wonderful collectible that's sure to sell!

eBay auction listings have some subtle differences. (With a venue as big as eBay, you gotta have some flexibility.) You may see the words Bill Me Later (which indicates you can use PayPal's payment plan) or Add Warranty (where the seller offers a warranty from Square Trade). Most listings also have preset item specifics that appear above the description written by the seller. If you're looking at an item in a fixed-price sale, you'll see the words Buy It Now, as shown in Figure 4-2.

Figure 4-2: Bypass the bidding ...